


Eleven A.M. on a Tuesday

by Needle_Bones



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Original Character(s), Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 01:46:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3750346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Needle_Bones/pseuds/Needle_Bones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kind of fluffy, pre-asylum fic. After I got through the game, I needed something happy so I figured Miles totally needed a rookie journalist looking up to him (and crushing on him).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eleven A.M. on a Tuesday

Terry Beckett made his way down the hall with a small plastic bag over one arm. He’d been wringing his hands in front of him ever since he’d gotten out of his car. 

He’d be in today, right? He should be. He was usually around until about one in the afternoon. He tended to leave then if he had someone to meet. Not that Terry had noticed that – no, no, of course not.

The air turned heavy, a little hard to breathe. There was this faint smell of cherries and second-hand leather and pleasantly stale cologne that always lingered around him when he got close to  _his_  office. It was the scent he’d always associated with him, ever since they met, and it never failed to wake up the butterflies in his stomach.

Terry stopped just to the right of the open door and spent a long minute just breathing and toying with the ID badge he’d clipped to his shirt. The overhead lights were off inside but that didn’t mean much. Miles usually left them off and worked just by his desk light. The overheads gave him migraines. Terry took a deep breath, bit his lower lip, and tapped on the doorframe.

“Mr Upshur?” he called, leaning around the door.

Miles looked up at him out of the corner of his eye, his short hair ruffled from pulling his fingers through it and his pen caught between his teeth. A few of the butterflies crashed into each other while the rest gnawed on Terry's insides.

_Stop being so star-struck – you’ve known him for over two months!_  Terry smiled without really meaning to, swallowed hard, and just hoped his voice wouldn’t get stuck in his throat again.

Miles blinked and took the pen from his mouth. “Hi, Terry,” he said, distracted and tired and scribbling down notes. “Did you need something?”

“No. Not really.” Terry shifted his weight, uncomfortable. Miles had always made him self-conscious. He was just intimidating - tall and wiry and intelligent without ever being condescending. What was worse was that he had these  _impossible_  storm cloud blue-grey eyes that tied Terry’s tongue into knots whenever they rested on him. The fact that he was apparently the type who looked after any interns the office had didn’t help much either. “I, uh… Have you eaten yet?”

“What time is it?”

“Almost eleven.”

Miles just shook his head. Terry exhaled through his teeth and took a step forward. “When did you get in?”

“About three this morning,” he said, not looking up. Clipped and to the point. He must have been tired. Miles was never exactly chatty but Terry had gotten him talking a few times before.

Terry cringed at the thought of even being awake that early. “Why?”

Miles just shrugged with one-shoulder, lazy. “Couldn’t sleep.”

Terry made a quiet humming sound. He doubted that was really the case. See, Miles had this terrible habit of meeting with people who could easily kill him without giving it a second thought. If he needed information, he’d go, simple as that. Reckless. Still, he didn’t call him on it. It was cold and rainy outside and he didn’t want to fight.

Instead, he took several steps across the low carpet from the door to the edge of Miles’ desk and set the bag down on one of the spots that wasn’t covered with papers and old files.

Miles stopped writing. Terry did this almost every day so he knew his cues by then.

“Coffee,” said the intern. “There’s a sandwich and a couple spring rolls in here in too.”

And Miles smiled at him in that crooked, endearing way. “You know, you don’t have to keep doing this,” he said, then clarified, "buying me lunch every day."

“I know,” Terry pulled the sealed cup out of the bag and set it down. “If I thought I had to, I wouldn’t. Besides, no one needs you getting sick. You’re kind of the star around here.”

“Far from it,” Miles set his pen down and leaned on his desk, wincing. He’d been sitting still for too long and his back was in knots. “I mean, I get results, sure, but I cause a lot of problems,” he said with that softer smile – the one he usually had just after something he’d done had gotten him chewed out by his boss.

Alan Matthers (their boss, really) sometimes got tired of filing police reports due to one of his reporters being threatened. Though, to be fair, Miles tended to get a little too close to the lion's cage sometimes - Matthers had known that when he hired him. If the rumors were true, that was essentially why he'd hired him on retainer like this in the first place. Miles was reckless and smart. And that was an incredibly dangerous combination.

Terry folded the plastic bag up. He needed something to do with his hands. “Well, you’re doing what you think is right," he said. "I have a lot of respect for that… even though you come back with stitches for it sometimes.”

He glanced down at Miles, who was busy turning the coffee cup in his thin hands. In the right light, you could see the tendons flexing under his skin.

Wait a minute. “Hey,” he reached out and grabbed him by the wrist, gently but firm enough to keep him from pulling away too easily. Two of his fingers rested on soft, cool skin while the others wound around the fabric of his sleeve. “What happened here?”

Not stitches at least – just a white bandage taped across the back of Miles’ left hand.

“I had to climb a fence,” he said.

“At three in the morning.”

“Right.”

Terry sighed and let go of his arm. He knew that was all the information he was going to get. Miles never told him everything he went through to dig up the facts and leads that he did but Terry could guess that at least some of his methods weren't entirely safe, sane, or legal. “You’re really gonna get hurt one of these days,” he said without really meaning to.

Miles exhaled in a way that sounded vaguely like a laugh. “Well, I’m pretty sure you’ll be the first to know if I ever do.”

It was kind of like an insult. Terry knew it was. It was that kind of good-natured jab that reminded him that they were, at least on some level, friends. And then the journalist smiled and Terry’s skin burned.

He laughed in that nervous, reflexive way and dropped himself into one of the nearby chairs. He’d brought a small plastic container of macaroni salad along for himself. Over the past few weeks, he’d figured out that Miles didn’t seem to mind him hanging around for lunch as long as he didn’t distract him too much.

And from there on, it was like all the other days. They sat and ate and Miles talked, but not much, and Terry listened and thought and fidgeted. It was nice here – warm and safe, away from the rain that blurred the city outside and the dark alleys that Miles could wander down like it was nothing. He’d pick up his camera and find a way into whatever meeting or locked building or records room he needed to. It was, like so many other things about him, confusing and amazing.

But Miles was strong and Terry was timid and Miles was smart and Terry couldn’t keep up and so he sat there thinking that if he was a calm, sunny, summer day, Miles was a hurricane in the dead of winter.

So Terry just smiled across the desk at that utterly amazing, completely impossible reporter who could make his heart race with a glance and a grin.

**Author's Note:**

> ['Falling in Love in a Coffee Shop' playing in the distance]


End file.
